Notes

We shall return to Builth Wells in Wales for a 6 band extravaganza on Saturday 23rd August. This
show will also feature the exellent P-Hex, Wiggy Bot (Northampton's own Stooges tribute riot) and three
Welsh bands.

If you really like it wild, and if you think you stand a chance of getting past the black helicopters and the
samurai-sword wielding security, then head for Builth Wells in Mid-Wales this Saturday. Once you get there, head out of town
west on the A483, which is probably signposted to Llandovery. A mile or two out of town you will see on your right a garden
centre, with a sort of truckers' cafe and probably some big old vehicles. Go on past this and take the first right into a
little lane. A few hundred yards up the lane you turn right into a field and your troubles really begin. Bring supplies and a
tent or something because this is NOT the kind of event that shuts down at 11:00 o'clock.

📝 Pat Says

BUILTH II - This time they're taking food

Regular readers might recall that last October, just when the band was
starting to get good, we headed out in convoy to Builth Wells
in Mid
Wales for a gig at one of Fred's legendary parties. It was a memorable
evening, but the members of the posse who don't eat meat did have one
small problem, what with curried goat being the dish of the day. Your
correspondent had a whale of a time on a diet of Liquorice Allsorts, as
it goes.

So it was that this August the corner shops of NN1 were systematically
stripped of Mrs. McCartney's sausages and Soylent-Green-Burgers by
shadowy, black-clad marginals. Instant barbecue kits were purchased from
supermarkets - along with jars of olives, jars of sun-dried peppers,
multiple dips, hummus, pitta bread, buns, chocolate. Somebody has packed
a vegetable grater. By the time that Saturday comes, one thing is clear:
the veggie faction is not going to be caught out this year, no sir.

Something else is to be different this year; the hotel where we stayed
last time has closed down while a new owner tries to make sense of it.
This time it's to be camping.

Early on a sunny Saturday afternoon the convoy sets off from the
Racehorse. Kathie and I find ourselves travelling with the estimable Mr.
Cotton and Sarah. We stop to loot Oddbins of its Budvar and Urquell,
then, intending to avoid bank holiday motorway hell, we take to the back
roads: Builth the pretty way. Huge farm carts piled with hay rumble
along in front of us at ten miles an hour. We play The Bad Seeds and the
Electric Six as we negotiate strange, obscure country villages, some of
which appear to have been occupied by stealth by the Freedom - sorry,
The French. In Leominster deeply tranquillised pedestrians wander
heedlessly beneath our wheels.

We reach Builth in the lovely early evening sun. As we drive up the high
street we see Stevie Ward's A-Team bus parked up, MC Bot hanging out
of the passenger seat window with his bullhorn, yelling "Wilson in the
area!" just like he did 11 months ago. Builth Wells' picturesque
little high street is heaving with people from Northampton.

After a few fraught minutes in the Hinterland, we once again find the
lane that leads to the party's secret secure location. We arrive to find
that a small camp has already sprung up in a far corner of the field and
here we join Russ and Nita, Misery, Mister E. Wilson, Stevie G, Stevie
Ward and his band. Tents go up, a fire pit is cleared for the barbie,
the Budvar crate takes a hammering. MC Bot bestrides the hillside with
his bullhorn.

Witness the birth of NN109.

Across the field, resplendent under their gazebo in the evening light,
sit the citizens of The High Chaparral, Jamie Jab and his crew of
mentallists. Relations between the twin settlements will be warm and
increasingly incoherent as the evening wears on.

The entertainment is nothing like what we had been led to expect. No
Welsh bands are taking part this year, and a PA has only just been
secured. That leaves only us and the debut performance from Stevie
Ward's new band, Good Cop Bad Cop. There are many members of P-Hex in
the area (well, in the field, I should say), but they are light of a
drummer. Stevie G makes a brave attempt to persuade Mr. Cotton to play
the drums, but Mr. Cotton is confused, thinking that Steve is referring
to Wilson's set. "Have you cleared this mad idea with Pat?" he asks.
"I don't have to," replies Steve bafflingly.

There is also the inconvenient fact that Mr. Cotton is actually a
guitarist, not a drummer at all.

So in the end we explain to the frightened-looking young lads with the
PA that they only have two bands to worry about. Kit is set up and sound
is checked. The courtyard is crowded with happy people eating barbecued
goat. We leg it back to NN109 for the first hot food of the evening.

As night sets in there are amazing views of the stars. You can see the
Milky Way clearly. "I can see why the Egyptians saw it as a mirror image
of the Nile," I venture, and promptly fall into a hole. If you're
lucky with the clouds, you can see Mars, as close as it has been to our
Earth since the days when Neanderthals roamed the hillsides, making
their camps, lighting their fires, cooking their food and singing their
songs.

ASTERRRRROOOOOID! COMING IN FROM THE VOID!

As the awesome sounds of the new Killing Joke album split the air, the
entire sky clouds over. What can it mean? My utility belt tells me "To
the barn, Batman."

Good Cop Bad Cop are heavy. A mean metal three-piece. There are great
tunes in there, but the PA boys have got things so cranked that it's
not always easy to tell from inside the barn: the band actually sound
better from about 40 yards away. Still, it's a fine first gig for
them. Their drummer is quite something, a definite touch of the Grohls
in there.

MC Bot takes to the decks, banging out Primal Scream, The Streets,
Wepunex, The Prodigy and Killing Joke. We wire ourselves up, ready to
go. Then it's time. It takes a moment to get the DAT up and running,
but soon the barn is echoing to the sound of Tim Leary and his
psychedelic sheep.

We start with a new, toughened-up version of God's Green Earth before
diving headlong into the Hippy Shit. The monitors are fairly screaming
at us onstage, but out front it's a clear, bass-heavy sound, with
Misery taking full advantage of Good Cop Bad Cop's excellent bass rig
(thanks, Alex!). She plays a blinder and the band feels great, we're
flying. The set:

As we start into Yellow Pages I realise that my microphone has gone
totally dead. In a mad panic, I seize Bot's mic and shout my way back
on board. It ain't pretty, but it works. Confusing, though - why
should it just go down like that? Bizarrely, at the end of the song I
get my mic back. Life goes on, but then, just as Buffalo Sniper should
be gathering force and steaming out of the breakdown, something really
spectacular happens. For the first time ever at a gig we find ourselves
without any kind of backing track. We're just running on our own
momentum. Fascinating - no time to think about it: we adopt a kind of
chug, hold our nerve and eventually rejoin the backing track as it
mysteriously resurfaces towards the end of the tune. Dark Agenda goes
off all right, featuring a chant of "No techno! No techno!" and an even
more out-of-control finish than usual. I leave my Telecaster feeding
back in a pile of rubble at the side of the stage and run out of the
barn. I stand in the courtyard for a minute or two, listening to the
sheets of filthy noise issuing forth. Then I run back in though another
door, to find MC Bot crouched over my effects, making mayhem. We escape
with our lives.

Even as we start to pack up, the techno begins. Out in the little yard
in front of the barn some eight or ten youths have gathered. They play
the deepest, darkest, dumbest techno at the loudest volume and set about
getting silently, wholly monged. We make a surprisingly efficient job of
stowing our kit and flee the area.

Back at NN109 I'm talking about the weird way that the top quality,
super-loud PA just suddenly went completely random on us towards the end
of the set. That's when somebody explains about the techno lads.
Towards the end of the set they came into the back of the barn (like
I'd notice. I'm a fecking guitar scientist, me. I'm lucky if I
notice anything back there) and started taking the record decks and
their attendant electronic shit out into the little yard. In so doing,
apparently, they managed to unplug loads of wires that had nothing to do
with the disco set-up, but everything to do with our disappearing drum
loops.

I have to say that my first reaction to this intelligence is to want to
go and batter the wotless youths within an inch of terminal oblivion.
Happily, better living through advanced biochemistry is achieved and I
come to take the broader view. Clarity, Simon, that's the main thing.
With understanding comes forbearance. With half-litre bottles of Budvar
come custom cigarettes and sausages in buns.

For hours people gather around the barbie, drink, smoke, speculate,
celebrate the footie results. The techno never lets up. Boom! Boom!
Boom! There is ill-advised cooking. Stevie D appears to freeze like a
statue, completely motionless out there in the night. Then, as Stevie G
goes to investigate, he drops like a felled tree. Into the car he goes.
'Night, Steve.

Daylight comes. Profoundly unevenly cooked Linda sausages litter the
area. Everybody has lost everything. Ian from P-Hex goes to sleep on the
ground. Jamie is heading back to the High Chaparral (though I can never
remember this name - I keep on wanting to say "Camp X-Ray" but I know
that's not right, so I just sort of get lockjaw), but before he goes
he seals me into the back of Russell's motor, where I plan to sleep.
As the hatchback closes on me I give him the thumbs-up through the
glass. I feel like a spaceman being sealed in his little capsule.

I awake to the sound of somebody (Curtis, as it turns out) playing
electric guitar. It's quite beautiful, but it's coming from far away
and I'm still three-quarters asleep and it's a little bit hard to
make out. There are weird little high frequency squeaks going on, which
I assume must be the amplified sound of fingers on strings. Once I
extract myself from the back of the car in an ungainly fashion, it
becomes clear that these high frequency squeaks are, in fact, coming
from a small and excited dog, whom Misery and Sarah are tormenting with
a luminous green frisbee.

The morning is overcast but incredibly hot. Bodies are strewn across the
field. There is suffering. Somehow, heroically, Mr. Cotton takes the
wheel of his car and prepares to take us home. Russ urges him to visit
the cheese shop in Monkland.

"Yeah, just gimme the fuckin' cheese!" cries Stevie G with feeling.

That's right. Monkland. Also, not far from here, they have a place
called Paincastle.

A road closure because of an accident on the A-44 leads to our being
compelled to drive home over the very roof of the world. I fall asleep
in the back of the car, and awake to find that we are pulling into a gas
station. In Telford. It has to be said, it is a class gas station, with
a proper shop and a nice Days Inn attached, so that you could - in
theory - check in for a few days and get a proper feel for the place.
A kind man in London subsequently sent me the attached illustration,
showing clearly the delights of checking in at the Telford Days Inn.

We arrived in NN1 at teatime, battered. Once again, a superlative party
out in Builth. Some of them were out there for days. Thanks to Fred and
everyone for making it such a good trip.

♥ Reviews

Saturdays Late Scores

But Pat you have failed to point out to the readers the all important score , Away Win ! ......... Wilson sounded STUNNING OUT FRONT, the collective hoofing of NN1 / Welsh Madmen proves it.

Techno - 0 Wilson - 6

Credit:
Mr Cotton of NN12003-08-29 00:06:14(Friday, 29th of August 2003 -
15 years 116 days ago)